Episode 541: Game on

SPEAKER_00 0:02

This is The Strategist, episode 541. My name is Zain Velji, with me as always, Stephen Carter, Corey Hogan. Guys, how are you?

Corey 0:10

I'm really good. I'm good. I'm in an undisclosed location with a one-year-old in the next room, so if you start to hear shouting, it's not Canadians revolting against this early election. It's actually my kin. Okay,

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Okay, so you're in an undisclosed location. Now, I'm going to ask you, is that undisclosed location Carter's bunker where he hangs out with his pet kittens? Is that where you are?

Carter 0:31

not allowed in that bunker and neither are you. Don't stop talking about the bunker. okay you

SPEAKER_00 0:37

you know the only reason we are doing this is because you guys were wrong uh the only reason we're putting this episode together is because last time i asked you is this thing going to happen on august 2nd or 3rd you know during this long weekend and both of you were like no way this is not going to happen and now we have to record this podcast update everyone on on this early rip drop so this is all on you guys we had

Corey 0:58

had a lot of confidence we had a lot of confidence that it it was not going to happen today.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Yeah, well, okay. I was expecting more of a fight from you guys, but that's fine. No,

Carter 1:10

No, no, we're prepared to admit when we're wrong. It happens so infrequently.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

Okay, so let's get into it because we want to record a quick hit today so that we

SPEAKER_00 1:17

we can provide people with a certain sense of context as to this launch that happened today and what the campaign looks like going forward in almost an unprecedented style with 11 weeks So let's go to our first segment. Ready, set, go away, I'm on vacation. That is the name of our first segment. And there is a lot to talk about. And at the top of it is the fact that a lot of people are on vacation while this rate has been dropped. So is that part of the reason why it surprised you, Carter and Corey, that this was done today? Yeah,

Carter 1:48

Yeah, I mean, Corey and I are calling in on Skype because we are, in fact, on vacation. This is the problem. I'm not sure that most people, I mean, maybe not most people, but I know there's a large group of people who don't even know that this election has been called. They're going to come back next

Carter 2:05

week and they're going to go, what happened while we were gone? And this is what's going to have happened.

Corey 2:10

Yeah, they're going to see a lawn sign on their neighbor's lawn, a crazy person, probably me or one of you guys. and they're going to say, I

Corey 2:17

guess the writ was dropped. And yeah, it's going to be tough to drag people's attention into it. I still think that just because you call an election doesn't mean people pay attention. And we're going to have to see how long

Corey 2:32

long it takes before people actually get into the sense that there isn't a campaign that's going on.

SPEAKER_00 2:37

Yeah, that's a good point you bring up, Corey. Let's talk a little bit about that launch of a campaign. You can You can launch it, but if no one sees it, did it happen? And all three campaigns got together and launched today in, I'd say, very different fashion. So I want to talk to you about that a little bit more. But before we get into the specifics, what do you guys think is involved in a good campaign launch? What do you think are the key ingredients to successfully launching a political campaign? And index that for me to a campaign that's 37 or 27 days versus one that's 11 weeks long. What do you look for in a good launch? Carter, I'll go with you first.

Carter 3:13

Well, what I want to look for is owning the news cycle that evening and ideally into the next morning. So the idea of launching your campaign is what visuals am I going to be able to present that are going to be the most important visuals on the day of the election? Now, the prime minister has a tremendous leg up in this because he gets to walk in to the governor general's home

Carter 3:35

and make the call. And no one else has that visual.

Carter 3:40

So Mulcair and Trudeau are now coming at this from a much different place, and they have to try and figure out how to actually own the news cycle on a day when really it's the prime ministers.

SPEAKER_00 3:52

Corey, what do you think? What ingredients do you think are necessary for a launch of a campaign that's going to last 11 weeks?

Corey 3:59

Well, I'll be honest. I can't remember. I was sitting here trying to think what my my last campaign launch looked like uh these things do tend to be forgotten pretty quickly but you want to roll out your main theme you want to have your visuals um kind of align with the message that you're going to be giving the overarching campaign message of the the next well in this case 11 weeks and with 11 weeks that's really tough but you'll note mulcair was across the river in in quebec almost

Corey 4:27

almost looking at uh the parliament buildings in the distance like he's about to launch artillery attacks against them.

Corey 4:33

You had Trudeau in Vancouver, where I think he had a pretty nice visual. It was almost an accidental visual. But here I am actually out in the country meeting with people. I'm going to Pride. I'm a guy who's doing politics different. Those other two are in Ottawa. I didn't think that really hurt him. And of course, the prime minister is stuck somewhat by convention. He's got to make his announcement in front of Rideau Hall after talking to the governor general. But in that context, they all had very interesting things going on. The three openings were wildly different. And I think in each of the three openings, we saw the seeds of a problem and pretty clear indication of the path they're going to take forward.

SPEAKER_00 5:15

I want to get that in a second, but I do want to allow Carter to chime in a little bit more. One of the things that you guys mentioned just right now was ensuring that you're on the right visual cue. What does the setup of a good visual cue look like? In past episodes, we talked about how summer barbecue season was effectively you walking into other people's events and trying to not look like an idiot. This is the time where you stage your event and you present yourself to the people for the first time. In a situation where the campaign, for lack of a better term, has already been being run for the last four or five weeks, two weeks at least. How do you set yourself up for a strong visual to launch yourself? Carter, any thoughts on that?

Carter 5:55

Well, I mean, to be honest, I would really struggle with it in this particular setting. I'm not sure that I'd want to pull out my ace to launch this early when people really aren't paying attention on a long weekend in August. But I'm not sure when I'd be pulling out my ace. And

SPEAKER_00 6:10

you say your ace, what does that mean for you? Is that content or is that thematic? What is that? Is that aesthetic? What is your ace for you? Well, it's all those those things i

Carter 6:18

i mean so when you have your ace you have something that people are going to remember and talk about for the duration of the campaign you have something that actually sets up the stage for you that everybody then has to try and match um we've seen you know in

Carter 6:33

in the united states there they have a much stronger uh experience if you will running this type of long campaign and you'll see them pull their aces out kind of every couple of months where they'll do a major event that they They own, and that major event is something that defines the brand that they want to be defined as. Because that's ultimately what we're talking about here is brand definition.

Carter 6:55

Who are you and what do you want to be seen as? Corey

SPEAKER_00 6:57

Corey Carter brings up a good point. What do you think of brand definition this early? Is it worth it or do you have a slow burn where you crescendo later on in the campaign? Well, I don't think those two thoughts are mutually

Corey 7:06

mutually exclusive. The process of picking the visual is really to get, and it is, it's very strategic, that first visual. And I think the U.S. model of the anchors and those big events is something we'll see. I'll be surprised if we don't have something right after Labor Day, maybe something again in October. One of the things I was thinking of is in the course of this campaign, we have three holidays. And all of those holidays offer a reset point, right? We've got this August long weekend for most of the country. We have Labor Day and then we have Thanksgiving before

Corey 7:37

before it's all said and done.

Carter 7:39

Well, and can I jump in on that, Corey? Because when we were doing the Nenshi campaign, Thanksgiving was massive.

Carter 7:44

holidays are a major time when people are getting together and as much as people pretend that they don't want to talk about religion and politics when they get together they often talk about religion and politics well

Corey 7:55

yeah the alternative is talking about your uncle's new wife right these are

Carter 8:01

so you this this enables people to talk about something and you can actually see a significant shift in those weekends if i was to plan out the campaign. And I may be jumping ahead here to another episode. One of the things that I'd be talking about is how do you define yourself before those major holidays? But this holiday and the Labor Day holiday, I don't think I'd care about. Because I don't think anybody's going to be talking about politics. I mean, you're going to be sure there'll be something, but no one's talking about politics or campfires tonight. It's not to have campfires. This

SPEAKER_00 8:32

This is an interesting timeline. You know, Carter, you're probably, this is not foreign When you ran Nenshi, the summer season, early August, climaxing to mid-October was effectively your campaign season. I mean, obviously, you guys had started before then, but this is not something foreign to you. So we'll definitely consider and talk about the nature of holidays and maybe do a little bit of a parallel based on where you were at with the Nenshi campaign. Well,

Corey 8:59

we jump off that, can I just say there are precedents with the U.S., the perpetual campaign, our municipal ones with the lock campaign, sure. But one of the things I'm really kind of concerned about as much as I'm interested about is what a 78-day writ period looks like for the government. Carter, I'd love for you to jump in on this because you were there as chief of staff, but government doesn't really function that well during writ period in this country. Announcements don't happen. Things don't go on. It's not like the United States with the perpetual campaigns. It's not like municipal where everything's going to continue on a schedule that council has set going well back.

Carter 9:37

Yeah, I mean, it is actually really difficult to work in the business of government because what the bureaucrats immediately start doing is they shut down and

Carter 9:47

and they prepare transition binders that they prepare. So let's differentiate between the people, the frontline service workers who are providing the services to people. I mean, obviously, all the checks are still going to be delivered. All of the actual activities that a person is involved in will get done or the government is doing will get done. But it's those policy initiatives, those big discussions, they absolutely shut down. So no one in Health Canada is going to be talking about what new political initiative the government should undertake. Not like this government ever does undertake anything in health. But if we had a government that actually did something in health, then we'd see it

Carter 10:27

would grind to a halt.

SPEAKER_00 10:28

Corey and Carter, I want to hit on this because thanks for bringing it up, Corey. Do you think this is too nuanced of an issue to be able to be considered a point of attack for the opposing parties on the government? Or does something big need to happen to highlight this situation that we're going to embark on or we've started to embark on? Let

Corey 10:48

Let me tell you, it's going to cost a lot. And I think you saw a lot of discussions about that today. They have to find a way to make that stick because, you know, Harper's opening was two-headed, right? He said, well, look, everybody's already campaigning anyways. And that to me is a pretty good point, because if it's game on, it's game on. But the other one was, oh, I'm going to try. We're doing this to save money. And that was so weak. And it was so obviously like a defensive move because he knew the most obvious attack coming was this is going to cost so much more now that it's a 78 day campaign instead of a 35 day campaign. but if i'm the liberals if i'm the liberals or if i'm the new democrats but less so if i'm the new democrats i really hammer you on this you know the liberals right now have come to this calculation it's going to be 125 million extra the

Corey 11:37

the ctv actually had an even higher number but that breaks out to about three million dollars a day it's going to cost people because not everyone realizes but every dollar that's spent in a writ period the parties get half of it back so you get 50

Corey 11:52

cents back every dollar that a candidate spends locally if they get more than 10 percent of the vote they get 60 cents on that dollar back so with all of these increased limits it's estimated about three million a day so if i'm the liberals no matter what i'm talking about for the next month you know we're here to talk post-secondary education but before we do i'd like to remind everybody that with what the extended election cost us today alone the government could have paid for the books of over a thousand university students or something like that i think you have have to tie it into your campaign narrative. You can't get too distracted by it, but it's pretty bad. And it's, it's a lot of money for not a lot of reason. And, uh, you

Corey 12:29

know, you had guys like Pierre Paul, you have today going on Twitter saying, well, let's not forget he got rid of that per vote subsidy. Doesn't matter. This, this is ridiculous. This is going to cost way more than that subsidy. Yeah. And

SPEAKER_00 12:42

And I think this is the point, this is the point we'll hit on. And I do want to move it on for, for the sake of, of this episode and, and to really hit on the major themes of the the launch. So let's start at the natural point that Corey, you had touched upon Stephen Harper's launch of his campaign. Carter, what are your initial thoughts based on the ingredients we talked about, the aesthetics, the content, the visuals, the overall brand messaging, what were your thoughts on the launch of Stephen Harper today and how would you rank it?

Carter 13:07

I mean, it was, to me, it was exactly what you would expect. Nothing more, nothing less.

Carter 13:13

harper isn't the best campaigner when it comes to visuals and themes that's not his strength his strength is uh kind of just grinding it out and finding out where the votes are and getting those votes to go there so you're never going to see stephen harper in what i would consider to be the world's best photo opportunity um or the world's best thematic uh kind of presentation presentation. He's going to grind through these things, answer his five questions a day, which the media are going to complain about every single day.

Carter 13:46

But if the media could pull their heads out of their asses and actually ask different questions instead of the same question three times, I think we'd have a chance to actually hearing some interesting answers. Corey,

SPEAKER_00 13:56

Corey, what's your take on this? Carter answered with as expected. Does Stephen Harper need more than as expected on a launch today? Oh,

Corey 14:06

Oh, I mean, Carter's totally right. This is not where Stephen Harper wins his campaign. And I don't know if I give him a failing grade on themes, if only because themes suffer for the benefit of his message discipline. And he knows message discipline wins the game. I thought, as a point of contrast, you had today, Harper took five questions, Malterre took zero questions, and Trudeau took as many questions as would be thrown at him. I

Corey 14:33

I understand that Trudeau wants to look like he's open, but I would caution and remind everybody, Michael Ignatieff did the exact same thing. He took every question. The risk with taking every question, on a day like this, it's fine, because it says, hey, Trudeau was open. He took every single question. And the story becomes about the questions, not the content. But you cannot control your message if you're letting them ask anything you want. In fact, you're giving ample opportunity for them, them being the media, to throw to the other guy's message. Prime Minister Harper

SPEAKER_00 15:04

Harper said this. So what I'm hearing you say, Corey, is that not everyone has the charisma of Arne Vinnick after a nuclear generator accident. A

Carter 15:12

A West Wing reference!

SPEAKER_00 15:13

reference! No! We're celebrating ourselves. Okay. Natural jumping off point. Justin Trudeau. Corey, you mentioned the accidental visual. Explain that a little bit more. You talked about the questions, but overall, how would you rank his launch today? And did he need a good launch? Did he need to be strong today? today ah

Corey 15:34

don't know i mean i don't know if he needed a strong launch and i don't know if it was strong i mean he looked comfortable and he was better at responding to questions than he was making his statement but his statement as it often does with his scripted stuff left me cold it just feels a little too uh

Carter 15:50

justin trudeau i mean he he he overacts everything and as a result you don't connect with them.

Carter 15:58

And I don't know how they're going to fix that in the space of a campaign, but maybe those guys like it. Maybe they decided that they like the over-actor. But

Carter 16:08

God, I mean, it just leaves me absolutely flat every time I see him do something.

SPEAKER_00 16:13

Well, humor me about this. You know, this launch today comes on the heels of what I'm assuming was It was a campaign launch video yesterday with him walking away from Parliament to a camera, talking about how Stephen Harper thinks he's not ready and indeed saying he is ready. With a long writ period, you know, frankly, he could be ready in 11 weeks. We never know. But what do you guys make of that video

SPEAKER_00 16:38

video and him engaging finally on the content of the conservative message on the heels of launching

SPEAKER_00 16:46

launching a campaign today?

Corey 16:47

I'll tell you, it wasn't badly constructed in the sense that the visuals were nice. His speech was actually as natural as I've ever seen it in a video like that.

Corey 16:56

But the content, you know, taking the charge, repeating the charge, they say I'm not ready. I mean, I get what he was trying to do with the turn of phrase, but, you

Corey 17:06

it's crisis 101, it's every type of communications 101. You do not repeat the charge. charge i i was talking about this on twitter last night there are ways to do that without actually repeating the charge my favorite ever is is just like last year subway released an ad about their bread and they're just talking about

Corey 17:24

how great their bread is for 30 seconds and if you are totally unaware of the fact that they got abuse for putting plastics or something close to plastics in their bread yeah

Corey 17:33

you just think they're bragging up their bread and if you are aware it sounds like they're responding to that charge perfectly they

Corey 17:39

they need to do something like that they needed something that effectively handled the charge without actually mentioning the charge so if you had somehow lived under a rock and not seen one of these just not ready commercials and believe it or not there are people who have not seen them or do not recall them then they needed to

Corey 17:55

to have uh they need to just say like oh trudeau that's a guy on the move instead he's kind of once again put into people's minds that this charge is legitimate because here he is responding to it even

Carter 18:04

even if they just gone with the we're ready messaging we're ready for the election calls tomorrow we are are ready for the election call tomorrow we are ready for the election to start today we are ready we are ready we are ready let me tell you how many times we're going to be ready the entire team is ready yeah

Corey 18:20

repeated the the chart steven i

Corey 18:21

agree with you a hundred percent if they had just cut out the first two sentences and like the last sentence they could have run the exact same ad once

SPEAKER_00 18:29

once again what we saw in that video was interesting in in the sense of an absence of the rest of the team we've talked about this multiple times on this podcast about how this campaign has has been focused solely on Justin Trudeau. Do you guys make of anything in terms of no team, no mention, anything like that to that video yesterday?

Carter 18:47

There was a time when Justin Trudeau was the biggest asset the Liberal Party had, and it looks like they're just going to stick to that model.

Corey 18:55

Yeah, I don't know. I don't fault them too much. It's very hard to get your team into an ad like that. That's a lot more people you need to wrangle if you're a videographer. and on top of that you have to make decisions about prominence and placement and all that i i think that you may see like that we're ready and a lot of people talking in the background there's some b-roll that was recorded at some point but i would be very surprised if there's ever an ad with the whole team or anything close to it for

Corey 19:24

for any of the parties let's

SPEAKER_00 19:26

let's move on to the final of the launches with tom o'care in the ndp core you'd mentioned earlier he took no no questions, but give me your feelings. Give me your thoughts. What did you think of his launch? Well,

Corey 19:37

he seemed less confident than Trudeau, but probably stronger on substance. At least that was my read through it. Now, I have to tell you, I went through Mulcair's speech twice just to make sure I was correct. But in English, he talked about a strong united Canada, and he didn't use anything close to that language in French. I think that he could open himself up to some real criticism and legitimate criticism if he continues to take that approach over the next couple of weeks, saying one thing to Quebec. In French, he's talking about the need to clean up the environment. He's talking about how they have to correct the problems the prime minister has made, which almost to me seems a wink the other way. We have to find a way to make Confederation work for Quebec. And in English, he's talking about leaving to future generations a strong united canada very

Corey 20:26

very different language i don't think that's tenable if you are running for prime minister of the country no

Carter 20:32

no not not in today's world if it ever was anything

SPEAKER_00 20:36

anything else to add carter on on the launch of tom mulcair and the ndp i'll

Carter 20:40

i'll tell you something if you'd um if i'd been his advisor and he uh you know there was a discussion of how many questions he should have have taken i would have said six yeah

Carter 20:51

no just just you know i think the mulca taking no questions takes away the whole prime there was a huge theme out of the prime minister's launch coming from the media and

Carter 21:01

and let's be clear a petulant media against stephen harper is in mulcair and trudeau's favor and

Carter 21:07

and don't don't undermine that by being so stupid as to take no questions on your first day Yeah,

Corey 21:14

Yeah, and his excuse for that was pretty weak. He said he, well, he was going to the funeral. He went to Flora McDonald's funeral, but he had originally planned to go to Vancouver before he canceled that because of the election call. So, you know, it's hard to say that that funeral was so important that you had to get right there in this set of events when it wasn't in an entirely different parallel universe where the election was not called today.

SPEAKER_00 21:38

guys before we break off this topic i do want to talk about one more thing which is the the length of the rent we've talked about it in a drive-by manner and we've you know mentioned that oh frankly everyone's campaigning and as one of the excuses that stephen harper gave but let's talk about some of the uh the implications of this longer rent i'm thinking one of them is going to be the um the unforced errors that that are made in this longer period of time do you see that as as being more common over a longer RID period?

Corey 22:06

Absolutely. It's just a faction. You've changed one variable. It's time, and they have X percent of screwing up every day. The question is going to become with every day something that was 30 days ago becomes less painful than something that was three days ago. I don't know really what effect this is going to have on the communications. communications i'm really worried about

Corey 22:30

about the staff the people who are making those communications and i think it's more likely they're going to screw up as this campaign goes on because i'll tell you something a provincial campaign is 28 days i'm ready to go you know and take it like a six month komen app after one of those campaigns that's a 16 to 20 hour day no exaggeration 16 to 20 hours every day for 28 days if you're in the senior leadership 35

Corey 22:53

35 days on a federal campaign is brutal and you see it in federal campaigns more than provincial campaigns people start to get silly the last week i

Corey 23:03

don't know what 78 looks like i don't even know if you can have the same team run a 78 day campaign no

Carter 23:09

no i mean let's just be clear if you're gonna if your plan right now is to run a 78 day campaign with the same team you're going to fail you're

Carter 23:15

you're going to fail and when that failure happens it can either be devastating or it can just be oops that was a mistake. And my thinking is it's probably going to be devastating. So make sure that you've got A team and B team and make sure that A and B get some time off. Otherwise, things are going to go haywire and you're going to make a significant mistake. Even the leader, you

Carter 23:39

you can't do a 78-day tour. It cannot be done. Don't try.

SPEAKER_00 23:48

situation has two questions that flow for me from it. The The first one is what does this mean about gaffes that leaders make? Does this mean that a gaffe made on day three of the campaign in a couple of days by any one of these leaders is not going to be as important as it would be in a 37? Or how do you treat the missteps and the unforced errors? Do they just have longer legs or are they just as short and you have more room to make more mistakes? Well,

Carter 24:15

Well, it depends on the size of the mistake. I mean, if you send out a release

Carter 24:19

release that says that Paul Martin, you know, is in favor of child pornography or however that one was phrased, it's going to stick with you for a long time. But other mistakes were a candidate simply, I mean, maybe it's Stockwell Day's mistake of saying that the Niagara Falls, the river flowed the wrong way. You know, that was a little mistake, but that was a mistake that was still part of a definition of who he was. if it's a mistake that's out of character you should be fine if it's a mistake that is entirely what you is expected by the national media and the voters you're pretty much screwed cory

Corey 24:55

cory what do you think yeah

Corey 24:56

yeah i think so although i do think these things will fade with time uh the cycles just spin so quickly these days i i think though that if you find yourself getting wrong-footed early the media is going to smell blood and uh they're going to define you like that ongoing i I think about in Alberta, the way Prentice got defined as this bundling guy who could do no right. And even when he was having an okay day, they found something that screwed up to hit them with. And they've got to be very careful to get out of that deep, deep trench, particularly Mulcair and Trudeau, because one of those guys is going to be the person who has all of the votes coalesced to them on the progressive side. And unless Harper does his job very well, I should say. But you don't want to be the guy who who gets in that ditch.

SPEAKER_00 25:46

Gotcha. The other thing is 11 week campaign. What does that mean for the general population's appetite on negative campaigning? You know, we saw the conservatives finally shift last week with the pay it back and now have an have an ad out against Tom Mulcair saying that he's a career politician who's an opportunist. So the guns are finally facing Tom Mulcair from the conservative side. But what I mean, in specific to this ad, sure. But what largely does this say about the appetite of negative campaigning with an extended? Can we talk about that ad? Yeah,

Corey 26:19

we have Stephen Harper's conservatives talking about Mulcair being a career politician. I mean, oh, yeah, this is the biggest problem I can see now why they were so reticent to turn on Mulcair. It's because all of the easiest attacks against Mulcair are attacks against Stephen Harper. he's cold he's angry he's calculating he's a career politician but

Carter 26:40

but he doesn't have a

Corey 26:40

a beer who does this sound like we're talking about though it's going to be very difficult uh the reason the conservatives have been so successful with the liberals is they've picked something you know this kernel that everybody had a doubt about and they built that kernel up uh they grew it that

Corey 26:56

that that was easy enough to do when those were such different things than things stephen harper was bringing into it not a leader you can't say that about harper love him or hate him you know he's a leader just visiting absolutely not uh this guy has been calculated and moving towards this job as long as anybody um and uh just not ready he's been the prime minister for a very long time at this point but this

Corey 27:19

this this career politician thing is just so rich coming from stephen harper and i just can't see how it's going to land well

Carter 27:26

well i just love i mean the the stuff that stephen harper says with a straight face just staggers me saying that you know that that people were campaigning on taxpayers' money. You've called a writ, dude. It's all about taxpayers' money now. He says it with a straight face and his base eats it up and he continues to campaign solely to his base. I

Carter 27:48

I just think it's amazing.

Corey 27:49

Amazing. And you're just skipping over even the billions of dollars in the past couple of weeks they've announced in different

Carter 27:56

Oh, how did I forget that?

Carter 27:57

Billions of dollars. I mean, even in Calgary, over $2 billion in Calgary alone. And let's tally up how much has been promised to Calgary over the last two decades. None. Zero. So to get $2 billion in a federal election, wow.

Carter 28:16

The pork is coming full

Carter 28:18

full circle here. It's pretty amazing.

SPEAKER_00 28:21

Answer my initial question there. Does this change the appetite for negative campaigning? Because I liked Corey's comments about this particular ad. And if you deem it to be an ad that you don't think will land, do you think you have to chalk that one up as something that you need to be mindful of the next time you put out an ad? Or do you think they're just going to carpet bag it?

Corey 28:45

Oh, you mean just like go nuts and bombard it on the airwaves and hope that even with diminishing returns it works? Yeah, yeah. You know, I think we've

Corey 28:53

we've sort of talked about this, but it will get more negative. Campaigns always get more negative as they go on. John, that infamous Kretchen ad, that happened in the closing days. The guns on our street were not, was not an ad that happened on day one of the campaign, right? Especially because you're in a war room surrounded with people who get really wound up about the opposition and feel like everybody in the country feels about the conservatives the way they do, or the liberals the way they do, or the New Democrats the way they do, right? It becomes very easy as time goes on and you've been in that bubble longer to believe that these tacks are not just not just justified but somehow tapping into a zeitgeist that's just not there frankly which goes back to this notion of you better have a couple of teams and you better have some some breathing room um yeah

Corey 29:41

yeah i think it's going to get negative you know even trudeau for a guy who said no attack ads uh and it was a mild attack of course but so is he's just not ready if we're going to be you know laying all our cards on the table but trudeau said, you know what I'm not ready for? And he nailed Harper to the wall with a few different things,

Corey 29:59

right? This is Trudeau no negative attack ads. What is Trudeau with no negative attack ads going to look like in 60 days? I think it's going to be fairly aggressive.

SPEAKER_00 30:09

Steven, what do you think? What's the optimal time for this to get negative? When do you think it gets severely more negative?

Carter 30:16

Well, I think you've been given a five-week test period. If you're not out trying to figure out what the people are going to respond to in the next five weeks during the rip period when the taxpayers are subsidizing your advertising, you're nuts. So throw out a bunch of stuff, see what sticks, and get ready for it to ramp up in September and October.

SPEAKER_00 30:36

Coolio. I want to move it to our final segment of this episode, the lightning round, the over-under. Guys, are you ready to do this? Couldn't be more ready. Okay. If you were to launch a campaign today, would you take good substance or good visuals? Corey, I'll go with you first.

Corey 30:53

a good substance because visuals fade fast.

SPEAKER_00 30:57

I would go with good visuals time over time.

SPEAKER_00 31:01

Interesting. I want to dig into that more, and I'm sure we will in future episodes. Okay. Who had the best lunch today? Corey?

SPEAKER_00 31:09

I think it was Harper.

Carter 31:12

Personally, I had a really good water skiing today, so I'm pretty happy with myself.

SPEAKER_00 31:21

I don't even know how to respond to that. Who makes the first gaffe of this campaign? Which leader makes the first gaffe of this campaign?

Corey 31:27

It's already made. It was Mulcair. It was not taking any questions.

Corey 31:31

Carter, do you agree?

Carter 31:32

Yeah. Mulcair made a mistake in not taking any questions.

Carter 31:37

Harper made a little mistake in only taking five.

SPEAKER_00 31:41

One of the things with this extended writ period is the increased spending limit for the central campaign, yes or no, do you think the liberals reach that cap on the spending limit in terms of having that money amassed to spend the full amount? Corey?

SPEAKER_00 31:55

Yeah, I think they do.

SPEAKER_00 31:57

Carter? Yeah, they will.

Corey 32:00

Yeah, I think the same. Both of them will borrow if they need it. They'll beg, borrow, steal, but they'll get there.

Carter 32:05

They're going to get there because they're going to get so much of it back.

SPEAKER_00 32:08

Which provincial or municipal leader has the most effect in this federal campaign? So which provincial or municipal leader from this country will have the greatest effect on this campaign?

Corey 32:20

Corey? I think it's win, and maybe not in a good way, but as goes Kathleen Wynne, so will go Justin Trudeau.

Corey 32:29

Corey, or Carter, I should say?

Carter 32:30

I'm going to go with Denis Coderre in

Carter 32:33

He's a wild card. He's someone that you can't necessarily predict and

Carter 32:37

quebec is in uh significant flux which

SPEAKER_00 32:40

which party wins bc

Carter 32:44

day of the week is it on

SPEAKER_00 32:46

on the on election day which party wins bc oh

Carter 32:49

oh man it's impossible i mean it's british columbia flips every five or six seconds it's it's making the alberta weather experience look predictable yeah

Corey 32:57

yeah it's true between all three parties i mean I mean, right now, I would say the votes look pretty flat between all three. The accessibility looks best for the New Democrats, and who everybody thinks is going to win looks best for the New Democrats. So I'd say the New Democrats win on the 19th.

SPEAKER_00 33:17

Which party wins Quebec on election night?

Carter 33:24

Well, I mean, I guess good money is going to be on the NDP.

Corey 33:29

i mean good bad fake money all the money should be on the ndp uh i just

Carter 33:34

just this is another opportunity for you to have a special episode where we have to go on and do a podcast explaining why we were so horribly wrong yeah

SPEAKER_00 33:43

yeah absolutely it is i i want to get you guys on the record 11 weeks out and then when the green party wins the election i want us all to huddle around and and uh and think about how we were so wrong yeah

SPEAKER_00 33:54

uh so i mean i frankly i wanted to test you know and express the volatility of what's going on both of you struggle on bc and quebec those are going to be huge voting blocks uh as to how this election goes over under on four over under on four the number of seats that the liberals win in alberta over under cory under carter

SPEAKER_00 34:14

who wins this election

Corey 34:17

know i honest to god yeah i go back and forth i i could even throw the liberals in on any given day i um i

Corey 34:24

i i think it's the new democrats gun to my head but i'm sure sure hoping that gun's not loaded i'm

Carter 34:31

i'm betting on a conservative minority and

Carter 34:34

and a close one at that it's

Carter 34:35

it's going to be maybe four seats short i'll

SPEAKER_00 34:37

i'll let you guys i'll let you guys refine your answers as we go ahead through this red period it's going to be exciting times many more episodes as a strategist to come but for this time, that's it my name is Zane Veldt, you're with me as always Stephen Carter, Corey Hogan and we will see you next time

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